


she walks in beauty like the night

by dumbassbastard



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, falling in love too fast but thats just a gay thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 04:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15573780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumbassbastard/pseuds/dumbassbastard
Summary: In the dead of night, Nyma's life gets a little brighter.





	she walks in beauty like the night

**Author's Note:**

> she walks in beauty, like the night  
> of cloudless climes and starry skies.  
> and all that's best of dark and bright  
> meet in her aspect and her eyes;  
> thus mellow'd to that tender light  
> which heaven to gaudy day denies.  
> \- lord Byron, 1813

Nyma was used to sneaking out of her house at night - so used to it, in fact, that one could think of her as an expert; the boys on her street certainly did, considering how often they went to her for advice on the matter. _The key_ , she always said, _was sound, not sight_. Too often, an amateur escape artist would give themselves away by trying to turn on a light, or else they would stumble along in the dark and cause a racket as they went.

But Nyma was no amateur – she knew how to navigate her world by sound.

She had perfected every trick in the book, like how to plan her steps so that the floor wouldn’t creak or how to hold a ring of keys so that they wouldn’t jangle, or even how to determine if her mother was deep in sleep or only lightly dozing based on the frequency of her snores. Perhaps that was why she loved darkness, while so many others feared it. Even if she couldn’t see a thing, there would always be sound to guide her.

This particular night, as she made her way through a poorly-lit alley at 3:30 in the morning, the sound that Nyma was following came from her own stomach. Nighttime walks had a tendency to leave her feeling hungry, so rather than continue back to her house, Nyma decided to take a left and head towards an establishment that she like to call "the best restaurant in town".

About fifteen minutes later, she stopped at a 24-hour fast food joint. _Mankind’s greatest inventions_ , she always said. _Poor impulse control and unrestricted access to chicken nuggets._

After ordering her usual meal - a milkshake and way too many fries - Nyma turned to survey the scene. The restaurant was practically deserted at this hour, as it usually was; besides the employee at the cash register and Nyma herself, there was only one other person at a table in the corner, a girl about Nyma’s age who was calmly working her way through a salad.

 _She’s gorgeous_ , Nyma thought dimly, taking in the girl’s bright eyes and slender frame, her dark brown skin framed by long white hair. She turned slightly, and Nyma thought she saw a pink birthmark running along the girl’s cheek. That was about the time that Nyma realized she should probably _stop staring_ before this turned into some cheesy teen romance, but before she could turn away, the girl happened to look up and catch Nyma’s eye.

 _Fuck_ , Nyma thought to herself, quickly averting her eyes and willing the blush in her cheeks to go down. She glanced up a second later, hoping that the girl had ignored her and gone back to daintily eating her salad, or whatever it was she was doing.

Only, the girl hadn’t looked away; in fact, she seemed to be _beckoning her over_.  “Oh, Nyma!” she called, waving slightly. “I didn’t expect to see you here at this hour.”

“…Sure,” Nyma said slowly, taking a few hesitant steps towards this girl. _Who was she?_

Whoever she was, the girl immediately noticed the blank look on Nyma’s face. “I’m Allura,” she clarified, an expectant look on her face. “From your English class in sophomore year?”

Nyma blinked. “Uh-”

“I sat a couple of seats away from you?"

“Yeah, I don’t really-”

“For an entire semester?”

“I was usually asleep-”

“We worked on a project together?”

“Look, I-”

“I was the girl who wrote a nine page essay on Lord Byron?”

Nyma stopped mid-sentence, her face immediately lighting up with recognition. “Oh! Byron girl! …That was you?”

The girl - _Allura_ \- just sighed and flipped a long curl over her shoulder, a movement that had Nyma's eyes flicking down to her collarbone before she could catch herself. “Yeah, that’s usually what people remember me by.”

Nyma smirked and leaned against the table, looking down at the other girl appraisingly. “Last I remembered, you had giant glasses and a Totoro backpack.”

Allura looked unimpressed. “Last _I_ remembered, you wore punk rock band t-shirts and announced that you were going to fight the entire varsity football team.”  

“Hey, in my defense, I called that one off. It just wouldn’t have been a fair fight for them.”

Allura didn’t say anything, just let the corner of her lips lift up in a smile - no teeth, just cute dimples and warm eyes and a birthmark that stretched along her cheek - and all at once Nyma felt like she had never seen the sun until that day. She had been stumbling around in the dark all her life like a girl on the run, but finally, the dawn was breaking; finally she could see a little clearer.

 _I’m… definitely sleep-deprived_ , Nyma thought, trying to shut off her cliché thoughts as quickly as she could. She had a reputation to maintain, after all!

“So, uh, what brings you to this corner of hell so late at night?” Nyma asked, sliding into the seat across from Allura. _Smooth, real smooth._

“Late at night?” Allura quipped. “It’s past four in the morning. I’m up early.”

Whatever confident smirk Nyma was trying to keep up immediately fell off of her face. “You- You’re what?”

“I’m… up early?”

“Like, you woke up? At like 3:30 or something?”

“Yes, I did. Actually- closer to three, I believe. I can never fall back asleep after I wake up, so I figured I might as well get an early start to the day.” Allura laughed as she took in the shocked expression on Nyma’s face. “What, have you been awake all night?”

“Of course!” Nyma said, feigning offense. “I take my bad sleeping habits in the form of insomnia, like any other common person!”

Allura raised an eyebrow. “Really? I wouldn’t exactly say that taking a stroll before bed is common. “

“ _Hey_. Look who’s talking. There is _no_ way that waking up and eating breakfast in the middle of the night is less weird than not being able to fall asleep. Insomnia is fairly common - but salad at three in the morning? Unheard of.”

Allura laughed again, loud and musical, and Nyma quickly realized that she could grow addicted to that sound. “All right, I suppose so. But look - we ended up in the same place, didn’t we? I believe there’s enough oddness around here to share.”  

“I think you're on to something, Allura.” Before she could ask anything else, or spit out something embarrassingly sappy, Nyma heard her order from the front of the restaurant; she quickly jumped up to grab her milkshake and fries and returned to their table, grinning in anticipation. “Speaking of sharing, do you want any fries? No offense, but that salad you've got there looks kind of dead on the inside.”

Allura shook her head slightly. The way she was holding her plastic spork, poised above her salad bowl, one might assume she was holding expensive silverware - she looked positively regal.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Allura said, bringing Nyma out of her musings. “The fries here are actually made with a meat flavoring. There aren’t too many vegetarian options here, to be honest, so I make do with what I can.”

“Hence the breakfast salad?” Nyma asked.

Allura smiled. “Hence the breakfast salad.”

Nyma felt herself smile back, a warm silence filling the room before she realized what was happening. She quickly tore her gaze away and busied her hands by picking at the food in front of her. “Well then, uh-” Nyma cleared her throat- “do you want any of my milkshake? Unless they’ve been secretly mixing in steak or something.”

“Oh! Well no, they haven’t, but…”

Nyma looked up to find Allura regarding her with an odd expression on her face. “...But what?”

“I mean, sharing a milkshake?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s like a cheesy date.” Allura was looking away now, staring intently at her salad with a slight flush to her cheeks.

Nyma froze, holding a fry halfway to her mouth. “Oh… would you look at that,” she finally managed to say - and _damn it_ , Nyma was supposed to be good at flirting! _Would you look at that?_ Really? It was like three years of swindling boys had gone down the drain. “Here,” Nyma said, recovering enough to grab another straw and stick it in the milkshake. “Consider it a reward for putting up with me at like, 4:45 in the morning.”

Allura looked up again, hesitant but smiling, and reached forward to bring the offered straw to her lips; not for the first time, Nyma found her eyes straying. After that, the girls ate in silence for a while, Allura finishing her salad, Nyma munching on her fries, both of them taking turns to sip at milkshake until it was nearly gone. But while Allura looked as calm and confident as ever, Nyma’s head felt dazed and buzzing, and her hands twitched with nervous energy. “Hey, uh, sorry for earlier,” she began, breaking the steady silence. “Not remembering you, I mean.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly alright,” Allura responded, hardly looking up from her food.

Nyma shook her head, unconvinced. “I’m serious,” she continued, “I didn’t mean to act like you were… insignificant. It was just that I kind of slept through about every period in that English class. I’m, uh, more of a math person - numbers and hard facts, you know- but anyways, yeah, that’s still a poor excuse for forgetting a girl like you."  _Say, something smooth, you can do this, you can do this._ "So.... I guess that one’s on me? ”

_Christ._

“Seriously, don’t worry about it,” Allura laughed. “I certainly wouldn’t have remembered so much if I hadn’t been constantly arguing with half of the people in that class!” Nyma’s face must have still looked skeptical, because Allura finally put down her spork and leaned forward, her hand landing only inches away from Nyma’s. “Besides,” she continued, almost shyly, “I think we can learn to get to know each other.”

 _Oh_. Nyma nearly dropped her last fry, staring at Allura in wonder. She could hardly look away - it was as though everything else in the room had faded to black. “I couldn’t agree more,” she said softly.  

Allura looked up through her lashes and met Nyma’s eyes, her mouth curved in a breathtaking smile. “Well, then,” she whispered, “I guess we could call this…a date?”

 _Her smile is contagious_ , Nyma thought, her own lips starting to take on a grin. There was something about this girl that just couldn’t be contained, something that spoke of shooting stars and old poetry and rays of sunlight peeking through window shades. Allura was, by all respects, _bright_. She was confident and warm and kind in all the places that Nyma wasn’t, drowning out the shadows that seemed to follow Nyma wherever she went. Where her words were quick and sarcastic and indifferent, Allura’s were low and sweet and genuine. Where her hands were rough and calloused, Allura’s were gentle and kind. And where Nyma kept her doors shut, Allura could knock once and bring the entire structure crashing down.

“Or we could… not,” Allura said nervously, bringing Nyma back to life. But Nyma shook her head, because even though she was used to negatives, the childish naivete still left in her was begging to say _yes_.

“It’s a date,” Nyma finally said. She tentatively brushed her hand against Allura’s, and the feeling where their fingers met sent a thrill racing up her spine. “Even if it is at an ungodly hour.”

Allura just laughed. “The sun should be rising by now,” she said, craning her neck to look out the window at the glowing horizon. “I’ve always loved watching the sunrise.”

“I think I can understand that,” Nyma said, her eyes remaining fixed on Allura. The sun was rising, alright - and she had white curls and pink birthmarks.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr unfortunately.  
> main is @platonicvoltron, but for posting fics and ship content i use @knifekogane -- come say hi!!


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